Pelican flight

It is midday. I am 2000' over Gosford on the Central Coast flying the Robin back from Bankstown. The sun is starting to break out after a week of rainy overcast. I have just flow through the last of the showers as I crossed Broken Bay, looking down at the fine Thursday yachts moving in and around its mazey inlets. I am over the urban sprawl looking north when against a forest background, straight ahead there sharp and precise movement towards me, slightly below, white against dark green, slightly below. It speeds as it approaches and it looks like a pair of fighters - left lead forward, wingman tight behind and to the lead's right. Astonished I stare and make sure we are not on a collision course. Radio controlled models???!!! The are only 100 or so feet below me and to my right as I roll hard to the right to continue to stare. PELICANS!! as they break into sharp focus. Not a hint of a wing beat that would normally give away their avian identity. Tight gliding formation on an arrow straight course south towards Brisbane Waters. Are they setting me up and laughing?

My camera is on the shelf behind me as I turn tightly back towards them, then dismiss the thought as unlikely to capture anything near the beaauty of the moment, assuming I can catch them, keep them in sight while turning the camera on, fly the plane into a good position and not get a blurred shot. Hold the vivid look of their black and white plumage, their slightly tilted upwards faces - long bills pointing straight ahead, and wings rigidly perpendicular to their bodies.

I love birds.



(Photo from www.nioc.fsnet.co.uk/intermediate04.htm prize winner Ray Bennet)

Lost on the ground

I dropped the Robin to the wrong mechanics! For midweek it was a busy Bankstown midday. With three or four aeroplanes and helicopters in the queue for finals for 11L. I taxied to the far western end of the aerodrome to where I'd previously dropped off or picked up the Robin. Parked, dipped the tanks, copied the numbers, put on the locks. Only to wonder if I was at the right place. S was only three aeroplanes back in the queue. He should be here by now. Lucky I brought the mobile phone, actually forgot it in the car and walked back for it back at the club. Now I confirmed, yep, taxiway delta. All the way over the eastern end of the aerodrome. The three or four people at the hanger were looking at me kind of funny. Even funnier now as I push back, turn around, climb in, unlock, start up and taxi off. And all the way there there were aeroplanes taxiing towards me, I had to thread the maze for a clear taxiway and eventually got there. Sorry!

S asked if I wanted to fly back. He'd been doing most of the passenging with me as the pilot ferry so I said no thanks, I'm happy to passenge a bit.

And I was. Casual navigating with the GPS and radio freq changes made it easier for S to check off his waypoints. And I got to photo my teenage home in Normanhurst. We chatted about the weather on the way back. We'd turned back early the same morning over the Central Coast when an unforecast wall of low cloud blocked our path south. I was in the lead and S and I used 126.7 as interplane to coordinate our survey that it did extend well south and too close to the ground, on the ground in places, to be safe therefore we turned back. It had burned off by midday but there was an appalling smog in its place trapped under the inversion layer at 2500 feet, and the prospect of the previous days' Mega Thunder/Hail Storm appearing in our path became a more strident topic of conversation as we watched a CB mushroom into the stratosphere abeam and slightly left of Williamtown – our destination. Well we beat it and we taxied back as its shelf clouds turned black, but soon after it evaporated into the blue sky.

Two hours in the log, plus another 50 minutes of bouncing in the bubbling air in the right hand seat. I am a sky person.

Photo of Normanhurst suburb of Sydney taken while flying north. I grew up in the middle right-south of the photo. (Harder to get lost in the sky).